Cerberus is proud to announce its new range of next generation broadband services, delivering speeds of up to 330Mbps, at break-through affordable prices. The new range of Internet services are ideal for businesses needing ultrafast connectivity downstream and upstream, with short lead times, flexible contracts and low prices.

Cerberus FTTP services provide real-world connectivity at speeds of up to 330Mbps downstream and 30Mbps upstream over BT optical fibre all the way to the premises, requiring no separate telephone line, and delivering rock-solid performance free from interference, regardless of line length.

Cerberus G.Fast services use BT Openreach's new G.Fast technology, an enhancement to FTTC. These services run over a standard BT phone line and offer speeds up to 330Mbps, depending on line length and quality. Currently in advanced stage trial, these services are subject to limited availability, but if you are in a trial area, you can order online right now and get the benefit of this next-generation technology, months before general roll-out.

With introductory prices for 330Mbps FTTP at just £67.50 + VAT per month and 220Mbps for £55.00 + VAT per month, Cerberus is making ultrafast business connectivity available to any business, large or small at industry-leading, affordable prices. FTTP and G.Fast have lead times of just 10-15 days versus months for leased lines, and come with a choice of 12 or 24 month contracts to suit your requirements.

Cerberus provides bonded FTTC services with a managed router kit with 24x7 monitoring and telephone support for complete peace of mind. Using advanced bonded technology we ensure that the service is consistently fast and reliable, with seamless failover and failback in case of an fault on any of the lines.

With prices starting at £125.00 + VAT per month for Cerberus X2 LLU FTTC has lead times of just 10-15 days versus months for leased lines, and come with a convenient 12 month contract versus 36 month contracts typical with leased lines.

If you need to see which of your broadband services can get an upgrade, just go to the new Broadband Upgrades report and you will see a full list of services that can benefit from better speed and stability using a newer access technology. Go to Orders > Broadband Upgrades to see a full list. Then just click on the name of the technology available alongside the connection you wish to upgrade to jump straight into a streamlined ordering process.

Additionally, if you see any connection eligible for an upgrade in the list view for Services, you can start the upgrade process using the Up arrow button on the right. Likewise when you are looking at a service in the detail view, you will see a link in the Requests section on the right labelled "Upgrade service to xxxx". Again, just click the link to get started with your upgrade.

Lastly, when searching the list of services, you can set the option in the Status field to Upgrade Available. This allows you to perform a custom search for specific services (maybe for a certain client) that can be upgraded.

A multisector KPMG survey of procurement managers across the UK from organisations with over 250 employees reveals that the general consensus among procurement managers is that SMEs should be doing more to prevent cyber attacks and protect client data. The vast majority of respondents said they would consider removing an SME supplier if they were hacked and nearly all of the respondents confirmed that cyber security standards are important when awarding contracts to SME suppliers.

George Quigley, Partner in KPMG’s cyber security practice, commented: “Cyber security is not just a technical issue anymore; it has become a business critical issue for the UK’s SMEs. Larger companies are placing an increased emphasis on the cyber security of their suppliers and increasingly the onus is on SMEs to show that they are tackling this issue head on. “Unfortunately many SME don’t see themselves as targets of cyber criminals. Unless these organisations take a more mature approach towards cyber security now, they face the risk of being frozen out of lucrative supplier contracts.”

Already two-thirds of procurement managers ask their suppliers to demonstrate cyber accreditations, such as ISO27001, Cyber Essentials, IASME certifications or PCI DDS, as a part of their procurement assessment, with this number likely to increase in the near future. In addition, SMEs are increasingly being asked to self-fund their own accreditations. In the absence of accreditation, 41 per cent of procurement managers expect their suppliers to pay for their own accreditations and reach a certain level of cyber maturity in the near future.

Quigley concluded: “In order for businesses to be awarded some public sector contracts they already have to demonstrate a certain level of cyber maturity and this is increasingly becoming the norm in the private sector as well. Companies are also embedding cyber security in their supplier contracts with about half of existing contracts already stating that suppliers are contractually obliged to tell if they have been hacked. This means that if a SME supplier is breached and doesn’t deal with it appropriately, they could be looking at the termination of an existing supplier contract.

“The government is looking to increase the cyber maturity of UK businesses, with accreditations like the Cyber Essentials Scheme. We can only expect the bar to be raised higher in the coming years. There is no time like the present for SMEs to start taking the initial steps towards increasing their level of cyber maturity.”

In order to realise the full benefits of Cloud services and Voice over IP it is essential to choose the right connectivity for your organisation. With a wide range of different technologies available, it can be hard to make sense of the varying service level guarantees and bandwidth limitations that each offers.

Cerberus Networks has led the way in providing cost-effective private, managed wide area networks that allow businesses to re-think how they work. Our ‘ground up’ approach eliminates many of the barriers of location that can prevent a more flexible and rational approach to situating and managing essential business services.

This is why Cerberus has refreshed the MyCloud Connect suite of products as a core part of our MyCloud concept to support the latest connectivity services such as EFM and broadband as well as offering increased flexibility in how to deploy security services and backup connectivity.

What does it mean for business?

BT has announced that they intend to migrate all customers away from their ISDN network by 2025. Until now there has been no set date for the ISDN switch-off despite much discussion within the industry as to when BT might switch off their PSTN and ISDN networks.

The announcement from BT is the first step in taking them towards their vision of a single IP core network that replaces all legacy networks and platforms. With over 3 million ISDN channels active in the UK, this will be a long process and BT will begin the migration process relatively soon in order to meet this ambitious target.
I use ISDN. What do I need to do?

First of all, there's no rush. BT have given themselves a decade to migrate customers away from ISDN, so your telephony services aren't going to stop working overnight. Nonetheless, this announcement is an opportunity for businesses to review their telephony services now in order to plan for the future. Moving to SIP trunking ahead of the ISDN switch off means you don’t have to wait to take advantage of VoIP benefits such as reduced call charges and flexible call routing.

SIP Trunking is a form of IP telephony and a replacement for traditional ISDN. In simple terms SIP allows the running of voice calls over your internet connection (Voice over IP, or VoIP).

Benefits of SIP and VoIP:

Reduce costs – SIP trunks do not have the high line rental charges of ISDN.

Fix call charges – included calls to 01, 02, 03 and UK mobile numbers

Flexibility - Your phone number is no longer tied to a geographic location when you move to SIP

Just add more SIP trunks to increase bandwidth and take more simultaneous calls

Together, the benefits that SIP and VoIP offer make it a viable solution for business communications. A recent report highlighted that nearly 60% of enterprises will be using SIP trunking by the end of the year. Before moving to SIP there are two considerations every business should address:

1. Internet connectivity

A fast reliable Internet connection is an essential pre-requisite to moving to SIP. It is important to assess whether your office internet connection can handle VoIP in addition to everything else it is already used for. Without sufficient bandwidth and a robust service level agreement, the advantages of VoIP are lost—you’ll experience poor call quality, intermittent service, and other difficulties.

The best way to confirm this is to use an online speed checker (such as http://www.speedtest.net). Compare your results to the minimum bandwidth requirement of 5Mbps down and 2Mbps for a small office of about 5-7 users on VoIP. Larger offices with more users will need more bandwidth and a better service level agreement than is normally available with broadband services.

Upgrading to an Ethernet connection will normally provide the additional upstream bandwidth and assured availability required for VoIP services. The government’s connection voucher scheme is offering grants of up to £3000.00 for businesses looking to upgrade to superfast connectivity. The scheme runs until 31st March 2016 although may end sooner if the £40m allocation is used before that date.

Full details for the connection voucher scheme can be found here.

2. Your current phone system

If your phone system supports IP telephony then you should have no problems using your existing hardware with SIP trunking instead of ISDN. Cerberus SIP trunks are compatible with all major vendors.

If your current phone system is not directly compatible you can install a SIP gateway. This fools the phone system into thinking it is still using ISDN whilst routing calls over your Internet connection. Whilst compatible with hardware from most vendors, Cerberus will confirm compatibility before you commit to any changes.

Another option is to move to a hosted telephony service such as Cerberus Horizon. This provides an extensive range of fixed and mobile telephony capabilities via an easy-to-use web portal. Hosted telephony is suitable for any size business and provides great flexibility for companies with remote staff or who need their telephony to grow with them. Hosted services are priced per user per month and avoid the high costs traditionally associated phone system upgrades.
What other options do I have?

For many modern businesses, moving to a hosted telephony service can provide significant benefits in terms of reduced capex, reduced support overheads and increased flexibility. Cerberus offers a number of options including Cerberus Horizon and MyCloud Lync.